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Mimicking Birds’ singer/songwriter Nate Lacy is broadening his horizons. And then shrinking them back down to microscopic levels.

With the band’s immersive and textural new album Layers of Us (due out Jan 2018 via Glacial Pace), Lacy takes us on an epic journey that examines both “the infinite and the infinitesimal” with equal amounts of wonder.

Layers of Us is Mimicking Birds’ third full-length album with producer Jeremy Sherrer (Modest Mouse, Dandy Warhols, The Shins). Recorded at Isaac Brock’s Ice Cream Party Studios, it’s easily their most ambitious work to date. If their self-titled 2010 debut established the band as fearlessly honest, and 2014’s Eons demonstrated added depth and experimentation, then Layers of Us represents the maturity that comes with touring extensively and continuing to expand their sound.

Lacy: “This album was shaped by our travels as a band. And just as much rhythmically and melodically as lyrically. On tour, time seems to stand still—in the songs we play again and again, in the geography we speed past.”

“As a whole we continue to advance and broaden the parameters of our senses.”
Layers of Us explores daunting topics like life, death, and eternity with a gentle touch. Lacy tenderly serenades us though this epic 10-song expedition that presents the full prismatic array of musical color.

“Energy, creation/destruction, geography, weather, and micro/macro processes are constantly recurring ideas, along with the notion of linear time vs multiple dimensions. This is relatable to how the structure of a multi-tracked, overdubbed song is interpreted. There are many different layers of time aligned into the same moment.”

“Sunlight Daze started out as a tiny two-bar loop created on a phone. I always felt as though the progression and melody had a sun-stoned, traveling feel to it. Lyrically I wanted to further approach the sunny vibe a bit more scientifically by extending that idea further out into the electromagnetic spectrum.”

The introduction of more synth sounds into the band’s arrangements was inspired by their time spent at Ice Cream Party.

Adam: “We started adding modular synths for Eons. But access to a variety of keyboards at Ice Cream Party helped to evolve the sound for this album.”

Opus Vitae (meaning life’s work) is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist / singer Banah Winn. Inspired by Kevin Parker (Tame Impala) Winn takes the same approach of composing, and recording solo. His latest effort, a 14 song collection called “Gramercy” is a real time autobiography of a year. A fluid narrative in which each song seeks to capture the emotion or feeling of a moment in time.

Erupting after a year of depression, the record takes on a bare all flavor where a range of themes are explored like; dealing mentally ill people who have power over you, sex as a way to avoid the pain of life, melancholy / nostalgia for a broken childhood, falling in love while being completely heartbroken at the same time, anger towards men from a female perspective / in conjunction with his own “me too” moment, and wake a the fuck up we’re destroying the world plea.

Winn who grew up in Portland Oregon, the son of hippie parents struggled to find his own voice after the generation of rebellion and excess. In Gramercy his decision to tackle his own truth unapologetically exposes his focus and range. As a troubled, broken and lost individual he finds his place in acceptance of just that. Where empathy for those marginalized and the thoughtless consumption of the world is reflected with anger and the knowledge that there are some pains a white man can only imagine or speak to.

Winn who now lives in Los Angeles recognizes the insanity of the city, and the world at large. Where he keeps himself clinging to reality and stability by facing such themes in his songwriting, doing yoga every single day, and blabbering about it to anyone who will listen, or is just nice enough not to slowly back away.